THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIV - Literature and Art

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Page 13

The wide deviations from the original have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the language harsh and quaint.(9)

9. One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line--

-Quem ego nefrendem alui Iacteam immulgens opem.-

The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):

--oud ara Kirken
ex Aideo elthontes elethomen, alla mal oka
elth entunamene ama d amphipoloi pheron aute
siton kai krea polla kai aithopa oinon eruthron.--


are thus interpreted:

-Topper citi ad aedis--venimus Circae
Simul duona coram(?)--portant ad navis,
Milia dlia in isdem--inserinuntur.-


The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe. Another still more ridiculous mistake is the translation of --aidoioisin edoka-- (Odyss. xv. 373) by -lusi- (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller). Such traits are not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have been properly his mother-tongue.

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